somethingwithturquoise | Some Space Bar in some Space Galaxy; Dimension FH-001; Friday Evening [05/12].

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Some Space Bar in some Space Galaxy; Dimension FH-001; Friday Evening [05/12].

Summer and Stark were, at this point, on their third space bar, and the evening had been going well. There was a little bit of space shopping before hand, to ensure that they looked their space best, and the first two space bars had been great. This one, however, was not impressing Summer very much, so it might not be too long before they found their way to Space Bar #4. She was pretty sure those were strands of 'Get Schwifty' mixed into whatever god-awful dub-step garbage the DJ was pumping out, and she was having some issues with the jerk bartender.

"That's so speciesist!" she declared. "You can't just assume I can't handle it just because I'm from Earth. I once huffed an entire K-Zax Array!"

"You huffed a Marlazzeh Gay?"

"No!" said Summer. "Well...maybe. I've had some pretty wild weekends lately, but what I said was K-Zax Array! Do you know what that is? That's like smoking The Ring, okay? Most pilots die after three days!"

"I still can't serve that to Earthlings. Federation law."

"Bitch," said Summer, "I destroyed the Federation!"

The bartender looked unimpressed.

"Ugh! Fine! Just...get me two of those glowing smoking ones in the fancy glasses, then, I guess."

And, once she had those two glowing smoking drinks in the fancy glasses, she drifted back over to where Stark was waiting to hand him one and then liberally take a drink from her own. "That bartender," she announced, "sucks. I swear to god, if you tip him over ten percent, I'm leaving you here."

She knew it would probably be impossible to convince Stark not to tip at all, so she figured that was a good compromise.

"....okay, fifteen percent," she allowed, looking at her drink, impressed, "because, damn, that's actually really good. Or I'm already really drunk. One of the two."

[[ for the egregiously modded alien with her, and NFB for distance, obvi ]]

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"Well," Summer snorted again, her attention shifted slightly to making a few adjustments now that they'd gone through, and she needed to adjust their coordinates accordingly and get ready for a descent onto the small blue marble of a planet they'd wound up over, "if she's so understanding, and all, I'm suuuure you could.

"And it's rigged up to the portal gun, actually," she said, "so it's, like, just the same technology, only...projected, I guess, through the front of the ship." Her idea, Barry's work, of course, but she was going to very solidly not think about that right now, and focus on landing procedures, because the sooner she did that, the sooner she could bust out some of the alcohol stashed in the back to drown out the annoying little tendrils of sobering thoughts creeping in on her. "Come in clutch during a battle. Makes planet hopping a fucking breeze."

Stark was sure he could think of a few ways to make things up to that favorite person.

"It's clever," he said. "I like it. And I like the ship. What I've seen of it, so far. I'm glad you took me for a ride, finally."

"It is insane to me," Summer declared, "that you have not actually been in my ship until now."

But, to be fair, she hadn't been taking it out a whole lot these days, either. Had talked about doing so with a lot of people, but she'd been pretty lax about the follow-through on all of that.

"You know I actually helped build her, too?" she added, proudly. "Well, not from scratch, obviously, Hera and I found a cheap old junker and souped her up to the glorious little transport you see before you today! And she keeps getting better, too. The pimp stick and the disco ball are the most recent additions, but I'm thinking about updating the cannons soon..."

She didn't need to update the cannons, but replacing the ones Barry had gotten her with something even more ridiculous and powerful, even bigger and more egregious, just felt like it would be...cathartic.

"I think we've both had...a lot of things happening. But we're here now. On the ship and... wherever here is," Stark said, gesturing at the little blue planet.

"Where is here? And I'm not surprised you helped build it. You're very clever."

Oh no, there was another dopey smile.

"I mean," Summer laughed a little at that, as the small pink spaceship's nose dove down toward the little blue planet and started heading its way, "Hera helped a lot. It was mostly her, actually, credit where credit's due, and Sabine did the amazing paint job, but I picked up enough from both of them to, you know, keep up on maintenance and repairs and shit. And, obviously, a lot of the upgrades since then were..."

Well. She didn't need to say where all the extra bells and whistles came from, did she? Hopefully not, because she definitely couldn't bring herself to say it, and the sober feeling was obnoxiously strong now, and she was now intent on landing this damn thing already so she could fix that.

"And it doesn't have an official name," she offered, a nice, convenient change of subject to the planet they were hurtling through space towards. "Just a designation. BS-146. Mostly uninhabited because its native species is a bunch of soul draining energy blobs, but, this time of year, they're in hibernation, and this part of the galaxy hasn't really caught on to the whole benefits of seasonal tourism thing yet."

"I never met Hera. She was gone before I came back," Stark told her.

He glanced over at her, frowning just a little when her voice trailed off. He recognized that move.

"I like mostly uninhabited. My favorite bartender might be the only one here. Soul-draining blobs I don't like. You're sure they're hibernating?"

He had his gun of a perfectly respectable size with him, at least.

"Positive," Summer assured Stark, and, unable to help herself, especially as she was accelerating even more for another atmo breach, and she let that rush help her shove aside everything else and focus on the task and the goals at hand, added, "And they hibernate like the dead. A person," or couple of persons, even!, "could be as loud as they wanted, and they'd barely even twitch."

"Were you planning on being loud?" Stark asked, grinning.

Or maybe she was planning on Stark being loud.

"Playing loud music?" he asked, very innocently. "Firing a cannon?"

"Something like that," Summer's grin tilted just a little bit more, and she jerked slightly at that unavoidable little jerk of impact from flying through any kind of atmosphere worth its oxygen-holding power, and the vast oceans of BS-146 spread out below them. "You did say you wanted to do more dancing, didn't you?"

Stark grabbed on to his armrest at the jail but relaxed after a moment. "I'm always happy to dance with you."

Any excuse to get close to her was good with Stark.

"Always. And we haven't danced enough yet. "

To that, Summer had a soft, thoughtful hum and a perhaps slightly less soft smile, as she reached over to flip on her nav screen. The music had been marching through its random play in going from one song into the next while she poured her attention into not only finding a good spot to actually land, but to do do in a way that didn't just highlight how much she'd had to drink all night.

Like, a short bounce through space was nothing? But landing a ship when you probably shouldn't be behind the wheel in the first place? That took focus. That took finesse. That took--

"Oof," Summer let out, as she jostled their way into a rough landing on a strip of beach along the deep, dark, moon-glittered waves of a sea where it was highly recommended you didn't go swimming in, actually. There was maybe a slight grinding and crunching sound that made Summer wince a little, but hey! At least they knew they'd made it, right?

"Well!" Summer announced proudly. "Here we are!"

Stark winced at the landing too. A little.

"Oh. It's beautiful," he said softly, looking at the view.

"Yeah," Summer agreed with a fond smile, taking a peek out through the windshield at the blanket of stars overhead that you only got in on minimally inhabited planets like this. "It's almost always the most beautiful ones that have the most dangerous crap lurking around, but it's pretty great when you can get the timing right..."

She took another moment, to just sort of appreciate that, to just sort of bask it in, to maybe get that little tug in her chest that made her want to just drop everything back at Fandom and just...go, and see where it took her, see if she could actually manage to find the end of it all, and then snapped back to the moment before that had the chance to spread much further than that little tug.

"Wanna head in back?" she asked, already knowing the answer, but, hey, you know. "Drop the hatch, get a good view of the ocean, dig out some of the bottles back there, and get to that dancing?"

She was reaching for her phone, already onto the next song, and hoovered her thumb over the Skip button, thinking of bouncing around until it landed on something that hit just right. But she remembered how long it took her to settle on something last time she was in charge of the music and to cull that kind of listless meandering through the options, she figured she'd just sort of ask, "What sort of vibe are we feeling?"

"I haven't seen much of the back yet," Stark said as he stood up. "There's more room there."

For dancing.

"You said you could be loud..." He mused, considering the music. "It could be a loud vibe... or a quiet vibe to start. Unless... you'd rather do something besides dancing?"

Edited 2023-05-13 18:25 (UTC)

"Mmm." There was a thoughtful hum, as Summer started to scroll through some options as she tried to think of her own vibe, which, for the most part, seemed to want to defy definition or being constrained to just one thing, and then she looked up from her phone to consider Stark.

"No," she said, after a moment, "definitely dancing."

And, with that, the mood of the music shifted significantly to something different, she settled her phone back into its little nook in the dashboard and flipped the switch to drop the side-hatch in the back before unfolding herself out of the pilot's seat to place a hand on Stark's shoulder and gently start nudging him that way.

Stark was, unsurprisingly, very happy to be nudged along.

"Oh. There's a bigger window. For the view. It's a very nice view."

Outside and inside, really.

"A good place to dance. I don't think I've ever danced on a ship before. I've done many things in ships. Not that."

"I needed lots of room," Summer explained, a little proudly, with a touch of nostalgia, giving the back a fond look; even with the elaborate system of cubicles and tunnels against one side of Pancakes, there was plenty of space, with the disco ball hanging over the center of it, a few chairs and a sofa where there used to be only boxes and crates, "for shipping supplies and ingredients for the jello shop. And all the contraband, too, but all of that usually went in the compartments under the floor paneling."

Her gaze then traveled back to Stark with a little lift of her eyebrow. "No dancing on Moya, huh?" she asked, before moving toward a different compartment, one hidden in a side-panel, which opened up to a few bottles. "Drink?"

"I would love another drink," Stark said, nodding. "If you'll make it for me. And no. No chances for dancing on Moya. I didn't ever really have opportunities to dance before. But I like doing it. Especially with you. But I think you know that already. Unless you thought someone else was my favorite dance partner."

"I mean," said Summer, "sounds like the numbers are kind of doing a lot of the work for me with that one."

There wasn't a wide selection of boozy, drinky things in the emergency booze compartment, really, so making Stark a drink, in this instance, allowed her to show off her impressive bartending skills of pouring raspberry vodka into a red Solo cup and handing it over.

"Not exactly a deep pool for comparison."

"I've danced with other people since," Stark said. "I like dancing with you best."

Sure, there still weren't that many possible partners to choose from. But that didn't make it less true.

"Thank you," he said, taking the cup and grinning.

"You're welcome," said Summer, with a look that said she could emphasize the whole numbers thing a little more, but she wouldn't, so he was welcome for that, too, as she poured some of the vodka into a second cup and then set the bottle back into the compartment.

"Cheers," she said, lifting her cup in a toast before making up for whatever sobering had occurred between this drink and the last one by basically emptying the entire thing in just a few big gulps as if the cup had really been just a formality.

"To... dancing? And very pretty views?" Stark suggested before he followed suit with his own cup.

"And... finally getting a ride in your ship."

"And being a better bartender with just flavored vodka and Solo cups than that last guy," Summer added, because that felt important, and never mind the face she made from having just chugged that much raspberry vodka in one fell swoop, a face she made at what remained in her cup, because even she couldn't manage to get all of it.

But it did the trick, and it did it quickly, and even though her stomach gave a little murmur of protest about the whole thing, her head was on its way to a nicely swimming state again. She finished up the last of the drink, to set the cup aside, and looked at Stark with a faint smile as the random play moved onto another song and she stepped in closer.

"Soooooo," she said, a hand lightly finding its way to Stark's chest. "About this dancing..."

Stark carefully set his cup down and stepped a little closer.

"I've been waiting," he said quietly as he moved to slide both arms behind Summer's back. "For dancing and for..."

Look, they were alone now and both tasted of raspberry and they were both at least a little buzzed and if he couldn't steal a kiss now when could he?

It was true; it was prime kiss-stealing conditions, and if Stark hadn't taken advantage of that, Summer would have been terribly disappointed. And as his arms went around her back, hers went up around his shoulders to pull herself in closer, and maybe the kiss didn't need to be quite so stolen.

She had thought they'd maybe keep the pretense going a little while longer, but this was good, too.

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